


Begin Again

by thekatcameback



Category: The Old Guard (Movie 2020)
Genre: Competency, Feelings are (unwillingly) felt, Gen, Nile has the only brain cell, No one is more sad than they should be, Post-Canon Fix-It, Reunions, Team as Family
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-07-29
Updated: 2020-07-29
Packaged: 2021-03-06 07:01:07
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,682
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25599223
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/thekatcameback/pseuds/thekatcameback
Summary: A non-murder reunion of the Immortal Family
Comments: 37
Kudos: 376





	Begin Again

**Author's Note:**

> Set an undefined time after the movie credits scene. Written on an airplane after leaving my own beloved but time-consuming family.
> 
> Pairings implied but not central to the plot.

\--

Immortals can take things slowly, but this is ridiculous.  
  
Nile has avoided looking at the clock because she doesn’t want to be impatient, but when she flicks her eyes up and left it confirms what her stiff muscles already knew. Still, even though this is her new team (family) she isn’t sure she should take the lead. She remembers the story that Joe and Nicky passed between them, the cycle of rage and insanity and nothingness (and she thought maybe death could feel peaceful when she thinks of her dad, but there’s never a rest in her dreams).  
  
The woman on the other side of the ragged table doesn’t seem insane at a glance. Her hair has obviously been cut and styled more recently than Andy’s, the jacket she has taken off is probably more expensive than Nile’s university apartment, and the t-shirt which should feel casual has possibly been ironed. If Nile looks at her eyes though, if only rapidly and without turning to face her directly—  
  
Nile has seen quite a few eyes in the last few years, and she wouldn’t turn her back on these. “Pit viper,” Joe had said. In Niles experience, snakes don’t relax when they’ve been released from a trap. She doesn’t want to lose a finger.  
  
She breathes levelly, in time with the others instinctively, and cuts her eyes across the group. Booker, an early and ill timed reunion, looks like shit. He’s got his chair an inch behind Quynh’s and it looks like someone took a baseball bat to his flask. For all Nile knows, his whole body had been that dinged a few minutes before he walked in the door. He’s unshaven and his shirt is misbuttoned by one and when he looks away from his drink his gaze goes anywhere but another immortal.  
  
Joe and Nicky sit together but split the difference in their postures. Joe has leaned back, a pose she’s coming to expect from him. One ankle balanced on the other knee, a hand propping up his head and partially covering his mouth. His left hand is too casually rested on a knee, each finger relaxed and slightly spread. He has a gun, Nile can tell, but she isn’t quite sure who he’d shoot first.  
  
Nicky’s pose is also not a surprise. Leaning forward, his elbows rested against his knee. He could be asking Nile if she wanted another serving of salad, or encouraging her to share her nightmare, or lying grandiosely about the Founding Fathers. He’s calmly tracking Quynh’s movements as she lifts a water glass or gestures with a hand, eyes open where Joe has adopted a disapproving squint. Nicky could flip the switch, she’s seen it before, but he’s hopeful again. Even as the youngest, she doesn’t know how the others can stand his confident optimism sometimes.  
  
And it hurts to look at Andy. Andy is naturally statuesque but has become a statue. She doesn’t look apologetic or excited or afraid but Nile can sense the energy underneath. If she touched Andy— if Quynh touched Andy, the woman would split at the seams like an overripe fruit. Nile is pretty sure that she knew Andy soul-to-soul before she wanted to admit that they were linked. She’s never seemed so fragile, even frail. She’s never acted so strong, like she’s playacting her normal role with sheer force of will and the effort demands a price in blood.  
  
Nile has seen cowboy movies built around a standoff, maybe a moment of silence before the twangy music rackets up the tension. Shit, she’s now old hat at standoffs herself, Merrick on down through the thugs. (Sometimes she wants to call them interchangeable, but after the fight is done she can always remember the pattern of freckles or the inflection of an accent and she can’t forget that they’re human and they didn’t have a chance.)  
  
This standoff makes her skin crawl. Four of the most powerful people she’s ever met, frozen by the living ghost of a woman that Nile feels like she’s dreamed into life herself. She doesn’t know how Quynh got free or found Booker or painted herself into the illusion of sanity. Instead, she can fill in some of the pieces of Quynh’s power through knowledge of the actions of the people Nile does know. Nicky’s instinctively outstretched arms frozen before a hug when Quynh tenses and radiates cold. Booker’s helplessly apologetic slump, sending her right back to the beach in London. Andy, shifting between tensely upright and thoughtfully hunched and, so quick anyone could miss it, listing towards Quynh like a plant in the sun.  
  
When Nile can’t sleep, she fantasizes about what she’s say to her mother and brother. Their responses are harder to pin down but she always forces her way to a happy ending. Now she’s seeing love separated and reunited played out in front of her and realizes she’s missed a variation. Quynh had said “Hello, Andromache” and taken a seat at the table and time had bent around her and frozen the rest of the team.  
  
The waitress, either persistent beyond common sense or so immune to the sense of danger that she could walk into a burning building with her customer service smile, comes up with her water jug. “Just so y’all know, we’re closing in half an hour. No rush with the bill, but if you’re not going to use those menus I can just—“  
  
The girl starts gathering them up, unaware of the intensity of five sets of eyes tracking her like prey. Nile feels a laugh try to shred its way out of her chest. She never even got to order her pancakes before the world had lurched sideways again.  
  
“Thank you,” Nicky says, cracking first with the need to be polite. “The bill would be— you know, just one will be fine.”  
  
Buying coffee for your centuries-lost friend, Nile thinks. She can’t suppress the snort that punches free, feels the burn of Quynh’s gaze on herself. Fine, then. She gets proceeding with caution. However, if Andy’s not going to order someone to bust down the door in this situation, Nile can take the lead on entry.  
  
“We’re actually staying a few blocks from here,” she says. All the training on hostiles and locals sings through her muscles— open shoulders, palms up, face relaxed, eyes— don’t think about the dreams, eyes calm. She doesn’t know if it works, if these people know the tricks of de-escalation as well as they know how to shoot on the back foot while wielding an edged weapon with their off hand. The weight of everyone’s gaze snaps back to her. Shock, maybe horror from Book, dismissal from Quynh.  
  
“I know,” Quynh says, her tone doubling as a threat and an end to the conversation.  
  
Nile has plenty of experience talking at people who don’t want her to be there. She keeps the pose, gently presses her hands flat on the table. “Why don’t you come over? I think we have enough instant noodles for a late supper.”  
  
To her surprise, it’s Andy who breaks first. Her laugh is jagged and, like Nicky before, she reaches out to Quynh before freezing. Nile glances at her, means to look reassuring and sees Andy face like their first flight, surprised at her own fondness but settling into it without a pause.  
  
Nicky sits up straight next, focusing on his billfold with unnecessary intensity and his head tilted at a blink-and-you’ll-miss-it angle towards Quynh and Booker.  
  
The silence wavers on a knife’s edge. Nile blinks slow and wide at Quynh and counts her breaths as she waits.  
  
Quynh has probably been subjected to enough lifetimes of forcing her way into action, so Nile doesn’t add any more pressure. She can see the moment where the woman makes the choice. “I’ve never had instant noodles,” she says gracefully, like a cat who’s finally deigned to look at its breakfast.  
  
“You’ll love ‘em or hate ‘em,” Nile says confidently.  
  
“You’re going to love them,” Andy murmurs. The women’s eyes meet and time glitches again, there are matching head tilts and smiles before the years slam back into them. Their faces are schooled back to neutrality and they rise in a unison that’s more gift than practice. Nile lets her shoulders drop further and keeps her face steady as she sucks in a relieved breath. Andy and Quynh leave first, equally confident as they share the route to the door without touching. Nicky brushes his fingertips against Niles elbow as they stand to follow, and his smile warms her down to her toes. Joe might give her a paragraph of feedback, but the way Nicky’s eyes gentle is a novel of gratitude and pride.  
  
“We only have five dishes,” Joe says very pointedly. He cuts his eyes towards Booker, but falls into line when it becomes clear that Nicky is walking with Nile.  
  
“I, uh. Yeah, I already ate,” Booker says unconvincingly.

If contrition had a taste, Nile thinks. But then, she can imagine Joe behind her, keeping his arms folded tight and his gaze straight ahead even as he matches his stride to Booker. She’s seen him furious in a blink and forgetfully welcoming a moment later, and in the relationship between Joe and Nicky, Joe is not the one with the long memory. Six months, and maybe he’s not ready to forgive. He still carefully touches the back of Nicky’s head in passing, storms and rages when they find a French novel in a safe house. Actually, Nile has seen Joe methodically make a fire from scratch in the living room and burn what he vengefully explained to be Booker’s favourite jacket from the nineties. He hadn’t used matches or flint, and Nicky hadn’t even glanced up from the crossword he was completing on the couch across from him.  
  
“Maybe we have some gin in the freezer,” Joe mutters grudgingly. Nicky winks at her and the rest of the tension recedes down to her feet and then out and gone. They follow Andy and Quynh home.


End file.
